Saturday, March 19, 2011

I was sad today. It's been a few weeks since I've felt the weight of his loss... That's an odd concept. Something missing, being gone, but having a tangible feel and substance. Maybe that's the metaphysical law of spirit: the more you take away from it, the heavier it becomes. Who knows? In our lifetime I doubt we spend enough time in introspection to really grasp the dimensions of the soul. I doubt I'd be smart enough to figure it out if I had dedicated my entire life to it. If it's even possible to figure out. If the soul even exists. So many suppositions...

Anyway, I was sad. It came from a TV show called Modern Family. Phil and his son Luke have just an amazing father/son relationship. They goof off together and feed off the others immaturity. Phil hangs on to his sense of fatherhood and knows he's there to protect and guide Luke, but he knows how to have fun with him, and you can tell they're best friends. It's the relationship I imagined I'd have with Aiden. I crave it.

I haven't felt that sense of loss so keenly as of late. In fact I've been able to look at the photographs of my son and smile. That hasn't ever happened before. I think about him with a sense of fondness, not sadness or guilt. There are still things that hit me straight to the core of my grief, though. Love/Breakup songs and father/son moments in movies and on TV. I cried at the end of Tron 2 because of the touching sacrifice Flynn the senior made for his son to live. I cried the first time I actually listened to the lyrics of some Linkin Park song on the radio because, even though he was talking about a breakup, all the things he was saying resonated in my heart with the loss of my son. "All I want to do is trade this life for something new. Holding on to what I haven't got."

It's not that these things identify completely or perfectly with my situation, but your mind does crazy things during grief. It makes pieces fit into a puzzle they weren't built to fit in. It's like an if/then math equation. If I'm sad, and X is a sad thing, then my sadness incorporates X to the power of... whatever I'm feeling like.

Well, here's to hoping tomorrow is a brighter day.

1 comments:

I share your pain my friend. I wanted to share something that I wrote after the painful loss of our baby Jordan. Just an excerpt from Heaven's Records:

Let’s take a walk into my wild imagination for a moment. I’ve often wondered how much our loved ones are allowed to see. I’m specifically referring to those that have passed on to Heaven. The Bible says that there will be no more crying there. One would have to question just how much of this old rotten earth they would be allowed to see. I find myself believing that every once in a while they are allowed to peak through tiny holes in Heaven. I’m hoping that God will allow them to see our finer moments. Maybe they are allowed to look into the great halls of Heaven’s records; not just the recorded past, but the recorded future.

I find myself thinking about the baby that we lost this past year. I can almost hear the pitter patter of tiny little feet as they make their way through heaven. I wonder if this little person will be full of questions. Our child is a citizen of Heaven, but I wonder what he or she will be told. Is our little one, who only knows the love of the Heavenly father, waiting for my arrival? Will this little person scour the record books of Heaven trying to find any glimpse of my life? Maybe, just maybe, the date of my arrival has not only been recorded, but it will be glanced upon by those little inquisitive eyes. I can just imagine our child making a daily trip to the hall of records. I can see this little person thumbing their way through each and every page until finding my name. Like most children, asking the angels will never be enough to satisfy their curiosity. They just have to see it for themselves. I find great comfort in knowing that my name has been written down in Heaven. I find peace in knowing that there are angels guarding my name, and very possibly, little fingers that are tracing over it.

We must never forget that someone is watching and waiting for our arrival.